Page 18 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

Coach Romanoff stalls for a moment, waiting for my acknowledgement, but I glue my gaze to the Rockies game and continue popping almonds into my mouth. I swallow a couplewithout chewing. Just as I begin to relax, the bartender reappears with another stout in his hands, his shoulders slumped forward in apology, ready for me to explode.

“Tell that washed up asshole I don’t even like stout.”

“It’s not from him,” he says quickly. “It’s from the gentleman back there.”

He points toward a half dozen men congregated around the furthest pool table. They prop themselves up on their cues like exhausted hikers steadying themselves on trees along the trail. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“In the Tulowitzki jersey.”

I see my father then, one foot lifted onto the chair, stretching forward to ease the strain of his bad right knee. His belly sags low. His ugly Richard Nixon nose is even bigger than I remember, stretched by the hands of Father Time himself. He is nearing sixty now, suffering the indignities time eventually visits upon us all: his once dark hair streaked with silver, his once athletic frame hidden beneath too many beers. His face is worn like a catcher’s mitt, dappled with sunspots and scored with crow’s feet, his fishlike lips curled into the cruel frown I still see in my nightmares. He lifts his own foamy glass of stout toward me in a mock salute. I’m so mortified by the gesture that I salute him right back.

I’ve attracted the attention of a hollow-cheeked brunette skulking around the restrooms. My first instinct is gratitude. She too recognizes the girl code women adhere to in bars and clubs. If another woman is in distress, even one you don’t know, you rescue her from the situation and whisk her to safety.

“Well, well, well,” the brunette says, grasping the bottleneck of her beer between two fingers, “it’s about time you showed your face here, you stupid bitch.”

Too late, I realize it’s Harmony. She approaches me deliberately, one gunslinger challenging another to a duel. Harmony is a diluted version of me and Grace—brown hair where ours isnearly black, brown eyes where ours are amber, a little paler, a lot thinner. She’s all veins and bones. Her sunflower yellow dress swallows up her frame and drags along the floor. She’s pretty in a sad, strange way, like Sally fromThe Nightmare Before Christmas.

She pokes the bottleneck into my chest. If her lumbering gait hadn’t already given away her drunkenness, her slurred words do now. Each syllable collides with the next like crashing cars. “I have waited thirteen years to call you that, you know? You’re a stupid bitch.”

“Say it again. Maybe it’ll make you feel better.”

“You don’t speak to me.” She digs the bottleneck deeper between my breasts. “You will never say a word to me. I am only—” She burps in my face. “I only talked to you so I could tell you to drop dead. I wish you were dead. Dead or rotting away in a prison cell, where you belong.”

The rest of the pool hall ceases to exist, the world melting away so we can share this pernicious moment. The symphony of cheers that ensues when the game-winning home run sails over the left field fence come from another dimension.

I ready myself for more of Harmony’s animosity. I promise to absorb every insult she has been saving for me. But she makes good on her promise to ignore me. No sooner than the words have left her lips, she has gone to our father. He pretends to be engaged in another conversation, but he’s been watching. His cruel frown has become a cruel smile as he delights in my wounded expression.

Harmony pecks his stubbled cheek to earn money for another drink. He makes a show of opening his wallet and placing the bill in her opened palm, a king bestowing a gift to a servant girl. Benevolent. Chivalrous. It is only because I remember the beats of this quid pro quo that it nauseates me. When we were kids, something as simple as asking him for lunch money required a lavish display of affection.

Harmony turns the money into two shots of whiskey. She downs them in rapid succession, her beer the chaser. There is no pleasure in her drinking. These shots are the means to an end.

The first shot glass whizzes by me and shatters against the wall. The second collides with my ribs like a shotgun slug before she heads out without another word.

My father’s posse roars with laughter, like Harmony and I are acting out an elaborate skit for their entertainment. One of them says, “She’s always been piss and vinegar, girl. Don’t take her so serious.”

“Providence has never been able to take a joke,” my father says. He labors over the three cumbersome syllables of my name the way people do when they first meet me. My parents’ first act of cruelty against me was my name. They burdened me with a name from which no nicknames could be wrung, then denied me a middle name to use as an alternative.

“I can when they’re funny,” I snap.

“I wasn’t talking to you, I’m talking about you. Mind your business.”

I throw a ten on the counter and storm out of the bar, determined to catch Harmony, but she has vanished into the ether. The rain lashes my face. My sister lives in Carey Gap. It’s not far. I can drive there and confront her, let her know I’m not going to let her abuse me for kicks. If she wants to read me the riot act, fine, I can take it, but I’ll make her use her words instead of throwing a drunken tantrum.

I’m barely in the car when my phone vibrates.

“What?” I shout into the receiver.

“Providence?”

I beat my head against the top of the steering wheel. I double-check the phone number, but I don’t recognize it, nor do I recognize the male voice on the other end of the line. “Who the hell is this?”

“It’s Connor.”

“Connor, I’m in the middle of something.”

“Can whatever you’re in the middle of be paused? It’s about your sister.”

“My sister is precisely what I’m in the middle of.” I start to turn the key in the ignition but stop quickly. It’s fruitless. My entire body is shaking. I can’t drive like this. “Harmony is so drunk she threw a shot glass at me.”

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